When lean production hits the wall: changing conditions of profitability for the automotive industry

Speaker: Stephen Bouquin, Centre Pierre Naville
For the automotive industry, the last decade was synonym of growing challenges of all kinds. From hardening normative frameworks regarding pollution to technological innovation (industry 4.0, digitization, electrification) as well as structural shifts in demand for new (and used) cars. Of course, not all firms where confronted in the same way to these challenges. Still, our main hypothesis is that these challenges became so important that lean production reached its limits and won’t be able to sustain profitability in a sufficient way without a sharp reduction of labor costs and a deep internal reorganization of capital itself.